


Through the Years We All Will Be Together

by ryeloza



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Holiday Fic Exchange, holiday fluff, light holiday angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-01-26 22:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 16,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21381952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryeloza/pseuds/ryeloza
Summary: A collection of requested fics I wrote around the holidays, some holiday-themed and some more general. Chapter summaries inside.
Relationships: Leslie Knope/Ben Wyatt
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	1. Three Minutes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leslie and Ben playing Boggle with Chris during "Road Trip." This ficlet inspired a longer work I already posted: "Out of Sight."

"You know one of the best things about Boggle? Aside from the fact that it's friendship-building fun, of course." Chris looks from Ben, who leans back in his chair with his arms crossed, to Leslie, who slowly shakes her head, and marvels at the lack of enthusiasm. For two people who did a phenomenal job today--and who usually thrive on pride in their work--they've both been rather quiet this evening. Chris had to positively strong-arm them into playing this game, and clearly they are failing to see its merits. "It's the delightful noise you get to make when shaking the tray," he explains, picking up the game and holding it out to Ben. "Come on, buddy. Try it. It's guaranteed to perk you up."

Ben gives him that patented skeptical look of his, eyebrow raised and mouth turned down, and reluctantly reaches out for the board. His shaking lacks that vociferous quality Chris associates with a rousing game of Boggle, but at least he's trying. The dice settle into their square homes and Ben sets it down on the table and lifts off the plastic lid. Leslie leans forward, drawn to the unstoppable appeal of Boggle, and Chris grins. If Leslie is on board, it will only be a matter of time before Ben gets into the spirit of the game (he seems particularly vulnerable to the Leslie Knope brand of enthusiasm--part of the reason they're such a good team). Even now, Ben's eyes are solely focused on Leslie, which would be a great intimidation tactic if Leslie wasn't so completely oblivious.

"Are we ready?"

Ben tears his eyes away from Leslie, catching Chris' glance and immediately looking away from him as well. He clears his throat, coughs, and then reaches for the timer. "Go!" shouts Chris, lunging for his pen; Leslie already has hers in hand. Ben merely frowns, and then turns over the hourglass.

If he keeps up that attitude, he's never going to win.  


  
*****

  
If Ben keeps staring at her like that, Leslie thinks, Chris is going to figure this out in a matter of minutes.

Sure, maybe it's not Ben's fault that his stupid expressive face wears every emotion as plain as day (really, he must be a phenomenally bad poker player, maybe even worse than she is--somehow people always know when she's bluffing), but he needs to get this under control. This is supposed to be a game of Boggle. If Ben wants to stare at her, he should at least mask it with a competitive glare, instead of looking at her like...well, frankly, like he wants to rip her clothes off. Or at least kiss her. Neither of which is acceptable to do with their boss sitting right there.

Not that Chris is paying much attention. His eyes are glued to the Boggle board, flitting over the dice as he blindly scribbles words on his pad, and god, neither she nor Ben is writing anything, which is also super suspicious. But Ben can't, obviously, because he's staring at her instead of the board, and even though she hasn't stopped looking at the letters since Ben set down the tray, she has yet to come up with a single word either because his gaze is too damn distracting.

Really, this should go on the con list of why she shouldn't make out with Ben, right below the potential of losing her job: rendering her useless during board games. After all, what use is there in playing if she's not going to win? And how can she possibly win if Ben's staring at her like he wants to make out? That's not going to be an advantage in any game, right? Well, maybe strip poker. Especially since he has no poker face. But that's not...They're not...

Yeah. Nope. Not going to think about that.

She extends her leg beneath the table and gives Ben a quick kick in the shin--just a gentle nudge to remind him to focus on the task at hand--and finally, he picks up his pen. Thank god. Now maybe she can focus.

Hid. Hip. Hog. Hop. How. Lid. Lip. Dim. Dig. Dog. Dough.

Out of nowhere, Ben's bare foot settles over hers, and Leslie can't think any more about Boggle.

  
*****

Ben couldn't focus on this stupid game right now if you paid him.

Chris is oblivious, at least at present, with his head buried in the Boggle board, and if Ben is going to be afforded three minutes of uninterrupted time to stare at Leslie, he's going to take it. Especially since the way she's leaning over the table is doing very nice things to her breasts, and her face is all scrunched up in concentration, and god, she is ridiculously adorable when she gets competitive. Now that she's silently reprimanded him, she's absorbed in the game, jotting down words even more quickly than Chris. And he knows she wants to win, can see it in the way her eyes fly over the board, but he feels this unadulterated urge not to be alone in this torture.

Yes, torture. Solving the world's most obnoxious word search in Chris' apartment while having to sit across from this beautiful woman who just two hours ago told him he wasn't alone in the way he feels about her and _not being able to do anything about it_, is practically the dictionary definition.

So he can't help himself.

He reaches out for her in the only way he can, resting his bare foot on top of hers and brushing his toe against her ankle.

Leslie freezes. Doesn't look at him, not even a glance out of the corner of her eye, but her pen stops moving across the paper, and it's obvious that she's no longer focused on finding words. And as pathetic as it is, her reaction is enough to make his heart beat faster; just that slightest acknowledgement that she wants this too is enough to make him feel like he's free falling.

He can only imagine what it will feel like when he finally gets to kiss her.

Yes, _when_, not if. Because nothing short of Leslie telling him not to is going to keep him from kissing her the second he gets the chance. Not Chris or the rules or work or any other damn thing.

"Time's up!"

Leslie jumps, but Ben turns to Chris calmly, sliding his foot across Leslie's soft skin, maintaining contact right under Chris' nose. And god, he derives way too much satisfaction from that, more than he wants to admit.

"Why, Ben," Chris exclaims. "You didn't get any words."

"Nope."

Chris slaps him on the shoulder, too distracted by Ben's failure to notice the way Leslie is looking at him--a mixture of exasperation and want that leaves Ben reeling. "Don't worry, buddy. You'll catch up in the next round. I know it."

Somehow Ben doubts it.


	2. A Lack of Poetry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Leslie on New Year's Eve, season 3.

Ben walks through the snow, a feather-dusting of white that barely covers the tips of the grass. It's too cold to anticipate more tonight, never mind that the sky is clear--only a thousand stars and a crescent moon above. Behind him, he can hear the consistently more drunken merriment of Ann's New Year's party, and of Andy still fighting with someone named Lawrence, who showed up to complain about the noise, but it's fading into the background as he follows Leslie's footprints to Lot 48. The chaos has afforded him the perfect moment to leave undetected; to sidestep a conversation with Jerry about cats and slip out after Leslie, who disappeared without fanfare ten minutes before.

It's impulse. Seeking her out, leaving the warmth of the party as the last minutes of this year tick away--it's born of same the presumptuous impetuosity that made him say yes to the Harvest Festival; to bring her soup and waffles when she was sick; to quit his job to take a chance. She left without a word, and he goes after her without thought because, truthfully, he'd follow her anywhere without her ever having to ask.

He should be more worried about that. He will be, later, when he's alone and deciphering his interactions with her, dissecting their (non) relationship in an attempt to figure out what's going on between them, a nearly daily occurrence for awhile now. _Nothing_, he'll conclude on his most pessimistic days; it's counteracted, at most, by _maybe she feels something too_ on his most positive.

He pauses as he reaches the perimeter of the lot. Leslie stands just beyond him, alone, hugging herself to ward off the cold. It's biting tonight, despite the lack of wind; the type of cold that permeates no matter how many layers you're wearing, or whether you're outside for a minute or an hour. Fighting against it is an act in futility. Not that it will stop Leslie from trying. He imagines a cold night is the last on the list of things that would make her give up.

Standing there, watching her, probably freezing to death, he allows himself a minute of fantasy: his arms around her small frame, holding her back to his chest, indulging in Leslie the way she indulges in life. And it's selfish--_he's_ selfish--to wish that he could claim her in even the smallest way. Worse still, he's going to interrupt this private moment simply because he's drawn to her. But she's a bright spot in a night made of black and white, and he couldn't turn back even if he tried.

It takes thirty-one steps to reach her. He counts, always counts; wonders if someday there won't be distance dividing them. If she hears his footsteps crunching through the snow, she doesn't acknowledge it, and he reaches her side to neither overt welcome nor outright annoyance.

This is the kind of moment that begs for eloquence or poetry--standing under a sky like this with a beautiful woman. It makes him wish he was someone, anyone, else. Someone who could put everything he's feeling into words without fear of idiocy or rejection; someone who knew how to, for lack of a better term, woo the woman he's crazy about. But like always, words fumble on his tongue, and when he speaks, he's just himself. "What are you doing out here? It's freezing."

Leslie squeezes herself a little tighter, like his words have just reminded her it's cold, further proof that he is utterly incapable of saying the right thing. She exhales, long and deep, her breath visible for a moment before it disappears into the night. "It's almost midnight."

"Yeah...Isn't that the point of having a party?" Stupid, innately sardonic tone. "I thought you were supposed to ring in the new year with other people."

Leslie shifts her feet, probably trying to warm them up, and frowns. "I didn't think anyone would notice if I slipped out for a few minutes," she says guiltily. "Did Ann miss me?"

"No," he says, not thinking because he's too busy wondering how she doesn't realize that to him, her absence is as conspicuous as missing a limb--that it's felt that way since the moment he met her. "Just me."

It seems impossible that three simple words could be so loaded, but they are, and the instant they leave his mouth, Ben flushes with embarassment. He feels like he just admitted a secret to her, one he's not sure he's ready for her to know. His eyes fall to the ground, studiously avoiding her gaze, which he can feel like heat on his skin.

"Oh," she says quietly, and Ben can't tell if that one syllable speaks of acknowledgement or recognition. He sneaks a glance at her, but she's turned her head away from him, staring out at the long stretch of darkened lot. It's impossible to tell what she's thinking, but he studies her profile anyway--memorizes the exact shade of pink the cold has tinged her cheeks and the way her hair falls over her neck; how her blonde locks look almost silvery in the moonlight. Perhaps it's unhealthy, the way he has started to collect these snapshots of her to fill his mind when she's not there, but every time he vows to quit, she reveals some new facet of her beauty, and he's unable to stop himself. At this moment, he's never seen her look so ethereal, so connected to the ephemeral quality of this night, and it's that knowledge that keeps him from averting his eyes when she looks at him again. There's a beat, several seconds too long, before he murmurs an apology, both for nothing in particular and everything she doesn't know he's thinking.

She turns to face him, taking a step toward him as she does, and he leans closer to her like a magnet attracted to its opposite charge. She steadies him, gripping his arm right above his elbow, and looks up at him, all tentativeness and unsurety. Ben knows that it's a look mirrored in his own eyes--uncertainty and fear that she might reject him; that this could all end badly. He still can't tell what she's thinking.

"I read somewhere that how you feel at midnight on New Year's Eve dictates how the year will go."

"Oh?"

"It sounds silly, I know, but that's why I came out here."

He can't follow what she's saying. Not when her hand squeezes his arm and then drops to his, pressing their palms together and threading her fingers around his. Leslie drops his gaze for a moment to look back out at the empty lot, and he murmurs some unintelligible encouragement, too focused on the feeling of her hand holding his and the way she looks right now. When her eyes find his again, he swears his heart beats faster.

She shuffles closer to him, or he does to her, or maybe they both do, and he finds his arms snaking around the small of her back, balancing her as she continues to stare up at him. Her hands smooth over his chest and and grip the lapels of his jacket firmly. Around them, the neighborhood erupts in cheers, ringing in 2011 with pots clanging and merriment that overtakes the silence of the night. Ben can hardly hear any of it. There's no one else in the world right now but Leslie.

He clears his throat; tightens his arms around her and pulls her a little closer; somehow finds words despite feeling wholly incapable. "How did you want to feel at midnight, Leslie?"

And it's not poetry. It's nothing lovely or sentimental. It's not even close to perfect. But at his words, she studies him, eyes searching his face like she's finally recognized him. Her arms slip up around his neck as she goes up on tiptoe, and Ben realizes what's about to happen just before her lips find his. She kisses him softly, her lips cold and her nose like an ice cube where it presses into his cheek, sensations he's not really aware of as his entire being floods with warmth. One of his hands reaches up to cup her cheek, and Leslie sighs into the kiss, gently sucking on his bottom lip before she pulls back, and even then, he can't stop his thumb from ghosting over her skin.

They lean toward one another. She laughs for a second, light and carefree, an audible expression of everything Ben feels right now, and then falls back on her heels, smiling up at him. "Hope," she says, apropos of nothing. Her eyes shine and Ben can't possibly look away from her.

"Hmm?"

"That's what I wanted to feel. That's why I came out here--because there's no place in the world that makes me feel more hopeful."

And he really can't stop himself from kissing her again. Is pretty sure, in fact, that now that he's started, he'll never be able to stop. She's smiling against his lips, causing all of her happiness to shine through him, and it's everything he's imagined amplified a thousand times. And he's damn sure that if Leslie's right (and she almost always is), this is going to be the best year of his life.

"I think," she says, taking his hand in hers again and holding it tightly, "that I'm off to a very good start this year."


	3. Two Little Elves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leslie wants Ben to dress up as an elf.

“I always really admired Hermey’s attention to dental hygiene.”  
  
“Uh huh,” Ben grunts. He’s half-asleep, more absorbed in the feeling of Leslie’s warm body snuggled up against him than Rudolph’s story playing out on the TV, which isn’t surprising considering they’ve spent a good chunk of the day watching Christmas specials (Leslie, who, the day after Thanksgiving, pulled out a box of Christmas movies that included a ridiculous number of VHS tapes, has a schedule to optimize their viewing experience). Her musing commentary is beyond his total comprehension at this point.  
  
“It’s a pretty sexy quality, I think.”  
  
“Sure,” he mumbles, shifting her a bit and letting his eyes drift shut. “Healthy teeth…”  
  
He’s asleep before he can complete the thought.  
  
Three days later, he comes home to find Leslie thoughtfully sucking on a candy cane, surveying the explosion of Christmas in their living room. Decorations are everywhere, a disorganized mess of lights and garlands and ornaments and wreaths, but with Leslie’s lips around the staff of the cane, taking such obvious delight in the taste of the peppermint, Ben is too distracted to notice the mess.  
  
She catches him staring. Smiles and lets her tongue dart out to lick all around the candy because she _knows_. “You know,” she says casually, “I bet candy canes are like aphrodisiacs for elves.”  
  
It’s a weird thing to say. Suspiciously weird, in retrospect, but at that moment, Ben is too caught up in needing to kiss her to notice.  
  
He doesn’t get wary until two days later, when he wakes up to find Leslie has left him a present. It’s sitting on her pillow, wrapped in paper depicting cheerful elves and topped with a flourishing bow, a tag attached. “To my sexy Christmas elf.”  
  
Inside is a pair of boxers, covered in frolicking men in green suits and little hats.  
  
Warning bells go off.  
  
It’s not like she hasn’t referred to him this way before; it’s happened more times than he wants to admit, actually. But never in the context of Christmas; never with this careful deliberateness that he finds unnerving. He thinks back over the past week or so, to the increased references, the casual non-sequitors, and wonders what she’s planning to spring on him.  
  
He has a feeling it’s not going to be a pleasant surprise.  
  
It continues for several days after that. Little asides in their conversation; a comment on how great he’d look in Christmas green; some slightly disturbing references to his elfin features during their foreplay. Each moment puts him a little more on edge, a little more anxious to get to the climax of this performance.  
  
And then one night he comes home to find an elf costume lying over the back of the living room couch.  
  
Green shorts. Striped socks. Curl-toed shoes. A hat with a bell on the end.  
  
Good lord.  
  
“Put me on,” reads the note Leslie has placed on top of this terror.  
  
It’s the worst case scenario. The worry that’s lingered in his mind like a distant nightmare ever since he figured out that she was up to something. And it’s only now that it’s here that he realizes how much he was hoping to be wrong.  
  
He grabs the hat, hoping that it will appease her (it won’t) and heads up to their bedroom, naïve in his belief that there’s nothing more to this.  
  
He’s wrong.  
  
So wrong.  
  
When he enters the room, he finds Leslie lying across the bed, weight propped on her elbow, smiling naughtily—at least until she realizes he’s sans costume.  
  
And she’s dressed head-to-toe as an elf.  
  
The whole shebang: hat, shirt, skirt, socks, shoes—outfit coordinated to the one she left for him—her hair pulled back in pigtails. She’s even added extra rouge to her cheeks, giving them a brighter pink tint. It’s a perfect depiction of an elf, aside from the frown that overtakes her when she sees him.  
  
“Ben,” she says, barely containing her whine, “where’s your costume?”  
  
“Um…” He puts on the hat, bell jingling absurdly, and tries to show a modicum of enthusiasm. Instantly, she hops off of the bed and pulls it back off, poking him in the chest with her other hand.  
  
“Come _on_.” She really is whining now. “I want to role play.”  
  
What now? “As _elves_?”  
  
Amazingly, she’s looking at him like he’s crazy. “Yeah. Well, I mean, I got the costumes for us to wear to the Christmas tree lighting in Ramsett Park this weekend, but we might as well get some use out of them.”  
  
“You—You’re serious?”  
  
“Yeah. Come on, Ben. Elves are sexy.”  
  
He laughs. Can’t quite help himself, even though he can tell it strikes a nerve with her. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes. “Sorry. But, Les, elves are not sexy.”  
  
“Yes they are.”  
  
She steps back, putting a hand on her hip and turning to give him a full view of her costume, walking across the room and back like a runway walk will convince him. Of course, when she turns to face him again, it’s abundantly clear that she thinks that’s the case. “Admit it, Ben,” she urges, arching her back a bit so her breasts stick out. “Admit this is sexy.”  
  
Sexy is not the first adjective that comes to mind. Disregarding the fact that Leslie is sexy all the time just _because_ she’s Leslie, this outfit is doing nothing to enhance that. Adorable, silly, slightly ridiculous: these are adjectives that apply to how she looks right now. “It’s—Well, it’s, uh, cute.”  
  
“Baby pandas are cute, Ben,” she huffs, both hands on her hips now. And this—Leslie somewhat annoyed and frustrated with him—_this _has a certain sexy overtone that harkens back to the early days of their relationship. But if anything, the fact that she’s dressed like an elf is killing it. “Penguins are cute. There is nothing cute about elves.”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
“Yes, seriously.”  
  
“Maybe that’s true in, like, _Lord of the Rings_. But Leslie, you’re talking about Santa’s elves. Santa, who is the exaggerated figure of a children’s story that the western world persists in upholding.”  
  
“Ugh. That might be the Grinchiest thing anyone has ever said. You’re perverting the spirit of Santa.”  
  
“_I’m_ perverting it?” he asks incredulously. Her ability to turn the tables and ignore key facts during an argument is continually astounding. “Leslie, my whole point is that he—and everything surrounding him—has no connotation with sex. At all.”  
  
Uh-oh. He knows that face. That _I’m going to prove you wrong, Ben_ gaze that basically spells doom, either his because she’ll succeed (she won’t succeed here), or theirs because her attempt will bring everything around them crashing to the ground. Leslie’s dedication to being right is never halfhearted.  
  
She steps closer to him, running one hand over his chest up to his shoulder, her eyes slowly trailing up his body to meet his with a soft, sultry look. “So you’re telling me,” she says lowly, “that Santa’s elves are inherently asexual creatures?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And that there’s never the occasion on a bitterly cold winter night, after all the toy making is done and the cocoa is drunk, that two little elves are going to curl up together to keep each other warm?”  
  
“That—No.”  
  
“That even if Santa frowns upon it, doesn’t think elves should be mixing business and pleasure, that there might be two elves who just can’t help themselves? Who think the twinkle in each other’s eyes and rosy cheeks and curled shoes are impossible to resist? You’re telling me that never happens?”  
  
He shakes his head, determined to stand his ground even though she’s fighting dirty. Standing this close, touching him, saying _those_ words in _that_ voice—it’s all a cheat because none of it proves her point.  
  
“No,” he says, ignoring the catch in his voice even if Leslie won’t. “Leslie, elves aren’t concerned with anything but making toys. Show me one story, one movie, one Christmas card—_anything_ that says otherwise.”  
  
Leslie grins dangerously. Almost like she anticipated his words and now she’s got him right where she wants him. He swallows hard and pretends his pulse isn’t racing at the thought of what she has planned. She steps back from him and bats her eyes, looking every bit the devil despite her pigtails and striped stockings.  
  
Slowly, she traces her hands down her body, finding the hem of her skirt and lifting it to reveal her underwear, a pair of green boyshorts with red lace trim. And right before his eyes, front and center, are two little elves in the throes of doing something unspeakably dirty, nude except for their green toe-curled shoes and jingle-bell hats.  
  
"Good lord."  
  
“Are you still going to tell me elves aren’t sexy?”  
  
And she looks so proud of herself, so positive she's right, that, dammit, he can’t help but laugh as he wraps an arm around her back and pulls her in for a kiss.  
  
“You’re right,” he acquiesces, because god, if she ever deserved to be smug, it’s right now. “You win.”  
  
“Good. Now go put on your costume. This elf wants to be on Santa’s naughty list this year.”


	4. Paper Chains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five-year-old Leslie at Christmas. This was was written before we got any canon about Leslie's father's death.

In the darkened hallway, the light emanating from the crack at the bottom of Leslie’s bedroom door might as well be a lighthouse beacon. It glows warmly, beckoning Marlene down the hall and incriminating her daughter all at once. Not for the first time (and Marlene would wager, certainly not for the last), it seems that Leslie has crept out of bed to engage in something that simply couldn’t wait. There’s always some excuse—_I had to read just one more page, Mommy! Coloring helps make me sleepy! Bunny needed to hear about Betsy Ross!_—and once, Marlene found her asleep in the middle of the floor, every board game she owns spread out around her (she never did discover what was going on that night). She suspects tonight will be something similar: Leslie, fast asleep in the middle of some kind of chaos. It’s nearly one in the morning, after all.  
  
_Our little night owl_, Robert used to call her. Even when she was a baby, she would lie awake for hours, just staring at the world around her. It’s a problem that gets worse when Leslie is excited for something, and given that Christmas is only ten days away, Marlene can’t say she’s surprised.  
  
What does surprise her is what she finds on the other side of Leslie’s door.  
  
Her daughter, wide awake, sits in the middle of the room, surrounded by a veritable sea of red and green paper chains. She’s half-humming, half-singing some silly Christmas song Marlene vaguely recognizes, but she freezes as Marlene steps into the room, holding a pair of scissors in one hand and a half-finished paper snowflake in the other. She bites her lip, eyes widening with guilt, and already Marlene can see the litany of excuses flying through her mind, never mind that the evidence speaks for her. There’s a hand-print of glue across her cheek, wisps of her hair already caught in the sticky fingerprints, and her pajamas are the victim of the same impatient swipes of her hands.  
  
Marlene feels the oddest urge to cry.  
  
It takes more effort than usual to suppress the urge, a troubling realization made worse by the fact that she’s not sure what’s triggered the lump in her throat and the sting in her eyes. She’d like to blame it on something trivial (_excusable_), like exhaustion, but it comes from a more complicated and infinitely weaker place—the part of her that is fatigued in an entirely different way because she’s raising a child alone and spending the month not counting down the days to Christmas, but to the anniversary of her husband’s death.  
  
Her husband, whose favorite time of year was Christmas. Who insisted on a live tree every year, despite the extra work, and who spent hours on outdoor lighting. Who used to make cheap-looking paper chains with his daughter and drape them all around the house. Her husband, who died a week after Christmas last year, and forever soured whatever joy Marlene might have once found in this season. It’s a truth she’s been trying to ignore for Leslie’s sake, one she thought she was doing a particularly good job of hiding, only to now see that it was an illusion she simply chose to believe.  
  
Crying about it, though, is simply not an option.  
  
Particularly as Leslie, who apparently can’t find words to explain her actions, is trying—and failing—to fight the same urge. Her face scrunches up, a bald attempt to hold in tears, but then she whimpers and begins to leak like a faucet. She draws her knees to her chest and buries her face against them, as if she believes that by hiding, Marlene won't be able to tell she’s crying. The problem is, Leslie cries with as much energy as she does everything else, and she can’t quell the wracking sobs and sniffles that give it away.  
  
Marlene gives her two long minutes to get it out of her system. It’s an indulgence she doesn’t usually permit—never if they’re in public—though, thankfully, Leslie doesn’t cry often. Tonight, though, she waits. Patiently allows Leslie to express what she’s feeling in a way Marlene can’t, and then pulls her back from that precipice.  
  
“Leslie,” she says, tone even and unemotional. “Why are you crying?”  
  
Her daughter bawls something incomprehensible, the top of her blonde head shaking back and forth in some denial, and Marlene sighs. “Sit up, Leslie. I can’t hear you.”  
  
Leslie lifts her head, the tear streaks and red-tipped nose only adding to the mess of glue and hair, to the point that it would almost be comical in other circumstances. “Well?” she prompts. “Take a deep breath first.”  
  
Leslie does as she’s told, swiping at her nose with the sleeve of her shirt as she does. “Y-You ruined the sur-surprise.”  
  
“What surprise?”  
  
Limply, Leslie picks up the end of one paper chain and shakes it a little. “I made it for you. F-for Christmas.”  
  
This time, Marlene stamps on the urge to be emotional before it even begins. There’s no use in it. Not for her, and definitely not for Leslie.  
  
“Come here,” she says, gesturing with a crook of her finger. Leslie obeys, rubbing at her eyes as she tiptoes over the piles of paper littering the floor. When she reaches the door, Marlene takes her by the shoulders and guides her down the hall to the bathroom. “Let’s clean you up.”  
  
Despite the hour, she runs another bath for Leslie, patiently washing the glue out of her hair and letting the warm water sooth away the last of the tears. She doesn't reprimand her, doesn't chastise her inability to go to bed when she's told and sleep, because Leslie is Leslie. This behavior, annoying as it can be, is something innate that no amount of lecturing can change. Punishment, as Marlene has learned, won't fix this.  
  
By the time her fingers are as wrinkled as prunes, Leslie is calm again, the light back in her eyes and warmth returned to her voice. “Do you like them, Mommy?” she asks as Marlene pats her dry, wrapping the towel around Leslie before they walk back to her room.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“My chains.” Leslie runs ahead of her, as boundlessly energetic as usual, and eyes the horrendous mess of paper with a critical eye. “I don’t know if they’re long enough.”  
  
Before Marlene can stop her, one of Leslie’s hands pokes out from the towel and grabs the end of a chain, guiding it backwards out of the room and halfway down the hall. Irrationally, all she can think is to wonder where Leslie found that much construction paper.  
  
“I think if anything, you were overambitious, sweetheart.”  
  
Leslie frowns. “Can we hang them up and see?”  
  
“It’s already hours past your bedtime. You have school in the morning.”  
  
“Please? Please, please, please? I’m not tired at all! Please, Mommy, please?”  
  
Leslie’s pleas are always wholehearted, made with the same passion whether she wants to push the button on the elevator or doesn’t want to eat her asparagus at dinner; Marlene can’t say that they’ve ever been the deciding factor in anything she’s granted her daughter. But tonight, at one in the morning, after stomping on so many of her own desires, all Marlene can see is the hope in Leslie’s impossibly large blue eyes.  
  
_After all, it is Christmas_, Robert would have said. Such sentimental nonsense. The kind that lives on in their five-year-old daughter. The kind she's been inadvertently stamping on all month.  
  
Or, maybe, in the middle of the night, she's simply lost the will to fight any more.  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Put on your pajamas and come downstairs.”  
  
Leslie barrels down the hall, dropping the towel, but letting the chain flap after her. Already regretting this decision somewhat, Marlene begins to gather the other paper.  
  
It is, honestly, a ridiculous number of chains.  
  
In the end, they have enough to drape around the living room window, along every doorway downstairs, and around the dining room light fixture. The remainder they hang across Leslie’s ceiling, a large red and green X that frames her room. The snowflakes—which Leslie maintains she needs more of--already fill up most of the windows in the house.  
  
If, by the time they’re done, Marlene decides that Leslie can miss one day of school to catch up on sleep, she thinks most people would understand. And if that means they settle onto the couch together with hot chocolate and tune in to the end of _It’s a Wonderful Life_, who can fault her?  
  
She’s still chastising herself, though, when she finally dozes off, Leslie snuggled up against her.


	5. The Stockings Were Hung

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leslie and Ben + Christmas stockings.

“Where’s your stocking?”  
  
“Huh?” Leslie glances over at Ben, who crosses the room to the fireplace and taps his fingers along the mantle. “Oh. I don’t have one.”  
  
“You don’t have a stocking?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You, Leslie Knope, recovering hoarder and owner of enough Christmas decorations to fill two houses, you don’t have a stocking?”  
  
She raises an eyebrow and carefully places another ornament on their Christmas tree. Considering Ben’s proclivity to question the need for this many decorations (as if Christmas is the time of year to be a minimalist—pfsh), this sudden incredulity is a little strange. “No, I don’t have a stocking.”  
  
“You don’t have a stocking?”  
  
“Are you feeling okay?” She goes to him and lays a hand over his forehead. He feels warm, but that could just be because he’s standing next to the fire. “Let me take your temperature.”  
  
“I’m fine. But, seriously…you really don’t have a Christmas stocking?”  
  
“Ben!”  
  
“Sorry. Sorry. I’m just a little bewildered, I guess.”  
  
She shrugs. “Why is that so surprising?”  
  
“Because. You’re…you.” He frowns, apparently dissatisfied with his explanation, as well he should be. Occasionally, she thinks there’s no rhyme or reason to his expectation of her. “I mean, look at our house. It’s like Christmas exploded. But you’re standing here telling me that you don’t own a stocking…”  
  
“Is that a big deal?”  
  
“No. Maybe. No. It’s just weird. The stockings are the best part of Christmas.”  
  
Crap on an icicle—he really is suffering delusions. Everyone knows the best part of Christmas is the tree. Or the songs. Or the cookies. Or finding the perfect present and blowing everyone else out of the water. Or the culmination of all of those things. But definitely not the stocking. “Now I’m sure you’re sick,” she says. She grabs his hand and tugs him over to the couch, pushing him down. “You rest. I’ll get you a cold compress.”  
  
“I’m not sick, Leslie.” He reaches up for her other hand so he’s holding them both and looks up at her; in this light, she can’t tell if his eyes are glassy. “Look, I know I’m overreacting here, but you just caught me off guard. It’s not important.”  
  
“You don’t have a stocking either,” she can’t help but point out.  
  
“My mom burned my stocking.”  
  
“What? Why?”  
  
Ben shrugs, a gesture that makes it seem like no big deal; the way his eyes drop to watch his thumbs run gently over her knuckles tells a different story, though. “My paternal grandmother made them for us, and my mom went through kind of a manic purging phase after my dad left.”  
  
“And she burned your Christmas stockings.”  
  
“She felt bad about it afterwards.” He looks up and smiles sadly, and Leslie hates his mom just a little, the way she hates anything that hurts him. “But it was my favorite part of Christmas morning. The stockings were the first thing you could see coming down the stairs, and…I don’t know. It was always exciting, seeing them and knowing Santa came.”  
  
It’s a sweet mental image: tiny Ben excited over the arrival of Santa Claus. Heartwarming in a way many of Ben’s childhood stories aren’t because a lot of them end in weird twists of madness. Like burning all the Christmas stockings. “I bet you were adorable.”  
  
“I was very cute. Yes.”  
  
She smiles, leaning down to kiss him, not protesting when his hands wrap around her lower back and tug her into his lap. He presses his forehead to hers, or, well, the furry white strip around her Santa hat, and sighs. “You never had one as a kid?”  
  
“I guess. It wasn't a big part of Christmas, though. And I never bothered as an adult. Who wants to see a lone stocking hung up on the fireplace?”  
  
“That is kind of depressing.”  
  
He kisses her cheek, the pad of his thumb swiping along her bottom lip as he does, and then he pulls back. He’s looking at her, though; that look that she still can’t give words to, but which makes her stomach flip-flop every time. “Come on. Let’s finish the tree.”  
  
“Sure,” she agrees, though her mind is already mulling over this problem and possible solutions. It’s okay, though. She can multitask.  
  


*****

  
This is the thing other people don’t understand about being a hoarder: the benefit is that you usually have what you need for a project somewhere in the mess. And given how many projects Leslie completes every month, it’s really a necessity to have those things at hand.  
  
Parsing down her craft supplies when she and Ben moved in together was one of the hardest things she’s ever had to do. Sure, maybe he had a point about the paint so old it was dry and cracked, and the ribbons that weren’t even long enough to tie into a bow, but she still disagreed that a scrap of paper wasn’t just as good as a whole sheet (they’d eventually compromised on this, and she’d kept anything bigger than one third of a page). But she’d been insistent about keeping her sewing supplies, ignoring the fact that the amount of fabric she had could fill a room by itself. Even after they had organized it into a fairly confined space (liveable, Ben had assessed it), he’d still been skeptical.  
  
Now she has the chance to prove him wrong.  
  
As soon as she can find what she’s looking for.  
  
It takes her a few minutes even though the containers are labeled in Ben’s neat script by either type of fabric, color or both, mostly because she has to move the boxes around the room to find the one she needs. When she finally reaches the container, buried in the back corner under three other boxes, she lets out a triumphant cackle, opening it and pulling out two bolts of fabric. They’re both plaid: festive, Christmas-y red and green; their dominant color the inverse of one another. Neither has ever been cut. She bought them at a low point during their breakup, seeing the plaid and being reminded of Ben, but she’d never been able to bring herself to make anything with it.  
  
Now she has the occasion; can think of nothing this fabric is better for: it’s perfect for Christmas stockings.  
  
Perfect for Ben’s Christmas stocking.  
  
She has the whole thing planned out (green for him, red for her); has already started working on embroidering their names into the white fabric she found to frame the tops of the stockings. It’s a new challenge, living with the person she’s trying to surprise (never mind the fact that she can have visitors over now and can’t leave things out in plain sight; Ann nearly saw the scarf Leslie is knitting her before she managed to kick it under the couch). This stocking project has been a test of her sneakiness, but so far she’s been pulling it off with tremendous aplomb. Ben doesn’t suspect a thing.  
  
He also has a point about the awesomeness of stockings. She’s already found over a dozen little gifts to put inside his, delighting at the idea of finally having a real reason to buy stocking stuffers. It’s taken Christmas shopping to a whole new level.  
  
And if she already had to alter her pattern to make the stockings long enough to fit all of the presents, well…  
  
She shakes her head. They’re going to look great.

  
*****

  
“Ben?” Leslie lifts her head off of her pillow and leans over Ben’s face, close enough that her nose nearly touches his. His eyes are shut and his breathing even, and when he doesn’t open his eyes and scream (like he did the last time she did this), she takes it as a sure sign that he’s asleep. Grinning, she slips out of bed, careful not to make too much noise as she creeps out of the room.  
  
Downstairs, she flicks on the tree lights, illuminating the shiny wrapping of all the presents they’ve already placed under the tree. Her stockings are hidden in a box under the couch with the reindeer-shaped hooks she bought to hang them from the mantle. She pulls them out carefully, centering the reindeer on the mantle, and then tacking the stockings up. They look lovely in the light of the tree, even if they did turn out a little, almost absurdly, long. Oh well. It’s more traditional, she rationalizes, given that stockings started out as actual undergarments hung by the fireplace.  
  
Ben’s stocking stuffers are buried under her knitting, and she retrieves them noiselessly to fill his stocking. It droops a little under the weight (thank goodness she reinforced the hook), and bulges in places, but that’s the point, right?  
  
She cocks her head, studying it critically, and decides it doesn’t look bad, just a little overstuffed. But that’s probably just because it’s next to her present-less one, so she retrieves a bag of chocolate Santas from the kitchen and puts it in her own stocking. It slithers down to the toe, a bulky lump in the bottom.  
  
It’s a slight improvement; the best she can do tonight.  
  
When she crawls back into bed, curling herself around Ben, her last conscious thought is of how excited he’s going to be in the morning.  
  


*****

  
Despite her late night activities, Leslie is up before both Ben and the sun, sleeping even less than usual because it’s Christmas. No matter how old she gets, it’s simply impossible not to get up once it’s officially Christmas morning (a 5am dictate her mother placed when she was a kid and which has remained her official start time), and she nudges Ben awake with a couple of well placed pokes. “Wake up!” she orders, kissing across his jaw and up to his lips. He responds lazily, groaning a bit as she continues to prod him, and wraps an arm around her waist, trying to pin her back down to the bed.  
  
“Too early. Sleep a few more hours.”  
  
“No, no, no. Come on! It’s Christmas! Time to see if Santa came.”  
  
“Can’t we see when the sun comes up?”  
  
Leslie brushes her fingers through his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp until he finally opens his eyes and blinks groggily. “This is my favorite part,” she says. “Seeing the tree all lit up with the presents underneath.”  
  
“Is that going to be different than it was last night?”  
  
“Yes. Because now it’s Christmas.”  
  
Ben smiles and pulls her in for another kiss. His hands tangle through her hair, lips becoming a distraction from her original plans, but this is certainly a new tradition Leslie can get behind.  
  
It’s a little closer to dawn by the time they stumble out of bed.  
  
She prods Ben down the stairs first, wrapping her arms around his shoulders as they descend and nuzzling his neck in an attempt to hide her excited smile. When they get downstairs, Ben takes her hand and interlocks their fingers, smiling at her like he’s just as anxious, but she barely notices as she finds the light switch and flicks on the tree lights.  
  
She glances up at him, waiting for him to notice the stockings, but he’s just staring at her, eyes crinkled in delight. He nudges her shoulder, looking over at the fireplace, and she follows his gaze, mouth dropping open when she finally sees what’s come over him.  
  
“What did you do?”  
  
She drops his hand, wandering into the living room, gaping at her stocking. It’s filled to the brim, possibly even more stuffed than Ben’s, and she reaches out to touch it, not quite believing her eyes. “What did you do?” she repeats, turning to look at him again.  
  
“Nothing. It was all Santa.”  
  
“Ben…”  
  
He shrugs. “I thought maybe…Knowing you, you might…” He trails off, still smiling sheepishly, and she shakes her head.  
  
“You ruined my surprise,” she chastises, although somehow that doesn’t really seem important.  
  
“It was just a suspicion, Leslie.” He crosses the room and wraps his arms around her, pulling her snugly against him. “I didn’t know until about an hour ago. But it’s perfect. They’re perfect.”  
  
“Not too long?”  
  
“Well…Maybe we better not light a fire while they’re up.”  
  
She grins and pulls him down for a kiss, delighted when he steps back and reaches for his stocking. “Now can we open these?” he asks, almost as impatient as she is. “The suspense is killing me.”  
  
Yeah. She can understand why he loves this so much.


	6. Love, Leslie and Ben

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leslie and Ben send joint Christmas cards.

Leslie stands at the dining room table, hands planted on the back of a chair as she stares down at whatever she's working on. She's biting her lip, brow furrowed in concentration. It's a sight Ben has seen dozens of times now, but it still makes him pause for a moment, leaning against the doorway and gazing at her until she notices he's there. She smiles, a look not directed at him so much as it is knowing, and he finds himself crossing the room to her, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing the back of her head before he rests his chin against her shoulder. "What're you working on?" he murmurs. The table is effectively organized: boxes of envelopes; multiple books of stamps; stacks of cards; a huge pile of colored pens--all strategically placed around the table with typical Leslie Knope fluidity. He imagines that sending out their wedding invitations in a few months will be tackled in a similar manner: precise and systematic.  
  
"Christmas cards," explains Leslie, moving her hands to rest against his forearms. "I organized them by topic this year. Snowmen, Christmas trees, Santa..."  
  
"Very efficient."  
  
"You think? Last year I had them organized by month, which didn't seem ideal at the time, but now that I'm looking at this..."  
  
"By month?"  
  
"Well if you make ten a month for the whole year, it's much less overwhelming."  
  
"You _made_ these?"  
  
He reaches out for the nearest card and plucks it from the pile. Up close it's more obvious that it's handmade: a detailed Christmas tree covered in tiny, sparkly candy canes. He thinks the amount of work that must have gone into crafting this--all of these--and, well, it's not so surprising, but he's overwhelmed all over again by her thoughtfulness.  
  
"Yeah," she says, her tone giving no hint that she knows that for most people this is an unusual phenomenon. "But sometimes it's hard to think of Christmas in July." She picks up a card and hands it to him and Ben laughs at the slightly sadistic sight of a snowman, complete with sunglasses, melting on the beach. "That's not even the worst one," she sighs. "There's a sunburned, shirtless Santa in there somewhere."  
  
"Good lord."  
  
"Oh well. We can send that one to Jerry."  
  
"We?" He steps away so he can see her face, sitting down at the table and looking up at her. "Yeah, _we_," she says. "As in you and me. I mean, we're engaged, we're living together, I just thought..." Her brow furrows for a second and she taps her fingernails against the edge of the table. "Did you want to send out your own?"  
  
"No, no, no...This is great. I just hadn't thought about it. I don't usually send out Christmas cards."  
  
"Don't usually?"  
  
"Okay. Never. I have never sent out Christmas cards."  
  
"I should have known." Leslie sits down next to him, lifting her feet to rest in his lap. Immediately, he wraps his hands around them, ignoring the sting of cold because she insists on being barefoot in the house even in December. "What with your hatred of the post office."  
  
"I don't hate the post office."  
  
"You do."  
  
"No. I just hate _going_ to the post office. There's a difference."  
  
Leslie rolls her eyes. "Well I will go to the post office, and you can silently support them by putting postage on the envelopes." She pushes the piles of envelopes and stamps closer to him and tosses him a red pen. "Now I got family addresses from your mom when she was here last month, and your sister gave me stuff for your dad's side of the family, but I don't know who else you want to send cards to."  
  
"Um..."  
  
"Who sends cards to you?"  
  
"No one?"  
  
"Ben!"  
  
"I'm serious, Leslie. I think this is a dying art. Although," he says, eyes drifting over the piles of cards, "you may single-handedly be reviving it."  
  
"Or maybe your nomadic lifestyle just didn't lend itself to mail."  
  
He smiles and squeezes her feet. "Maybe."  
  
Leslie taps her pen against the table and then against her lips, studying him thoughtfully. After a moment, she draws her feet away from him and swings around to face the table, digging through a pile of Christmas cards. "Fine, Christmas card virgin. We'll start simple."  
  
"Okay."  
  
She pulls out a card and holds it up, and good lord--it really is a terrifying, sunburned, shirtless Santa under a palm tree. "We'll start with Jerry. That way if we mess up, it won't matter."  
  
"Is Santa stranded on that island?"  
  
Leslie glances at the card and shrugs a shoulder. "I'm sure the reindeer will rescue him."  
  
"Of course."  
  
Leslie opens the card and sets it on the table, writing the date in the corner and addressing the inside to the entire Gergich family, and then she pauses, all momentum lost. "I never know what to write in his card."  
  
"Merry Christmas?"  
  
"Hope you feel better in the new year?"  
  
"I wouldn't write that."  
  
She groans. "Fine." The pen moves across the card stock, her neat script spelling out a cheerful Christmas wish. "It's boring, so I guess that's perfect for Jerry."  
  
"Yeah. I'm sure he'll love it."  
  
She slides the card across the table to him, already reaching with one hand for another, but her efficiency is lost on Ben, who is staring at the card with something akin to awe. It's silly--ridiculous, even, given the ring on her fourth finger and the fact they're living in a house together, her things mixed with his in a way that means home more than any place he's ever lived on his own--but there's something about seeing their names together at the bottom of that card that makes his stomach flip over.  
  
"Which do you think for Ann?" asks Leslie. With effort, Ben tears his eyes from her _Love, Leslie and Ben_ and glances at the two cards in Leslie's hands, not really seeing either.  
  
"Um..."  
  
"I think the tree."  
  
"Yep. Yeah. Good."  
  
She frowns, setting down the card and looking at him with concern. "Are you okay?"  
  
He nods, pulling an envelope over and picking up his pen. "Oh yeah," he says, grinning as he joins their last names together in the return address. "Everything's great."


	7. Under the Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drunk Leslie at Christmastime.

Leslie’s laughing hysterically as Ben attempts to unlock their front door with one hand. His other arm is wrapped around his fiancé, trying to hold her up in her intoxicated state. She’d been liberal in her consumption of eggnog at Ann’s party, and it was around the time that she tried to slip her hand down his pants in the middle of the crowded room that he decided they needed to leave, a tearful parting that featured a duet of “Blue Christmas” and proved that Ann wasn’t faring much better.  
  
“I like this door.” Leslie reaches out to stroke the wood with her mitten-clad hand. “It’s a very nice door, you think?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Do you think we should paint it red?”  
  
“Probably not.” He opens the door, catching Leslie as she stumbles forward, and manages to get her over the threshold.  
  
“Well what color do you like? Hmm? Not blue, Benji. Not blue.”  
  
“I think I like it the way it is.”  
  
“Blue’s too sad for a door. What’s a not sad color? Yellow?” Ben crouches to help her out of her boots, and her hand immediately finds his hair, raking through it, nails running over his scalp, tugging slightly. “What did you say?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“Hmmm.” Leslie leans back against the door as Ben sets her shoes aside, standing up and toeing off his own shoes before heading to the closet to hang up his coat. It’s been quite awhile since he’s seen her this drunk. Her rambling is unfocused, more nonsensical than half of what she mumbles in her sleep, and unstoppable. The car ride home featured a loud, off-key rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” with original lyrics, each verse promising specific gifts for people she knows. Problematically, each line of the song was different on repeat because she couldn’t remember what came before (minus the bacon wrapped shrimp for Ron that rounded out each verse).  
  
It also went quite a bit longer than twelve days.  
  
The fact that he still found her adorable while she made an already annoying Christmas song worse is a testament to how much he loves her.  
  
He turns around, ready to help her out of her coat and up to bed so she can sleep this off, but Leslie has disappeared. Considering he thought the door was the only thing keeping her upright, it’s a bit surprising.  
  
“Leslie?”  
  
He glances around the foyer, not quite sure where he thinks she might be hiding in the open space, and then wanders toward the living room. The Christmas tree lights are on, barely illuminating the dark room, and Ben turns on a lamp so he can see.  
  
“Be-en.”  
  
“Leslie?”  
  
“Ben. Ja. Min. Benjamin Wyatt. You’re hiding, Benji.”  
  
Leslie continues to softly babble his name as Ben looks around the whole room. Finally, his eyes end up right back where they started: at the tree. And lying on the floor, head resting on the tree skirt, is Leslie. “Honey, what are you doing?” She’s still in her coat, arms spread out like she’s making a snow angel, an altogether bewildering sight.  
  
"Being your present. Don't you want to unwrap me?" She dissolves into laughter while he tries not to think about what she's saying, and then out of nowhere, she becomes serious, tone changing and giggles fading.  
  
“Turn off the light."  
  
“What?”  
  
“Ben! Turn off the light! Turn off the light, Ben! Turn it off!”  
  
“Okay, okay.” He shuts off the lamp. Leslie’s incessant chanting lasts a beat longer until finally everything stills. He can just make out the snow falling outside and Leslie’s body, prone on the floor. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she’d passed out under the tree.  
  
“Come here.”  
  
“No, Leslie. Come on. Why don’t we go upstairs? You can put on your pajamas—”  
  
“No, Ben,” she insists, her tone quieter now than during her previous request. “Trust me. Come here.”  
  
He crosses the room to her, feet perpendicular to her hips, unwilling to argue with her right now. He’s known since the day he met her that there’s no reasoning with her when she’s drunk; she’s stubborn enough stone cold sober.  
  
“Ben, Ben, Ben.” He looks down at her, just able to glimpse her hair under the darkened branches of the tree. “Do you like your name, Ben?”  
  
“Uh, sure. I guess. Yeah.”  
  
“I like your name. It’s only three letters. Not too many E’s. Sometimes I think my name has too many E’s.”  
  
“Two?”  
  
“Sounds like more.” She says her name, dragging out the syllables as if to prove her point. “I guess when we get married I could take your name. Fewer E’s. But then both of us would be named Ben and that might be confusing.”  
  
She giggles, overly amused by her own joke, and Ben can’t help but let out a low chuckle at how far gone she is. One of her arms swings down, connecting with his ankle, and she turns her hand to tug on the cuff of his pants. “Come here.”  
  
“I am here.”  
  
“No. Down here. Come under the tree with me.”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
“Would I lie never?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
She gives a ferocious tug on his pants and he sighs, crouching down and maneuvering until he’s lying next to her under the branches of their Christmas tree. Immediately, Leslie reaches for his hand, hugging it tightly in her mitten. “Look,” she whispers.  
  
He blinks up at the dark branches, the fuzzy outlines of red and green and blue and white and purple lights glowing. The smell of pine is overwhelming, the wooden floor uncomfortable against his spine, the view slightly disorienting, and when he turns his head to look at Leslie, she’s crying. Kind of. The tears seem to be falling without her knowledge, unaccompanied by sobs or sniffles, barely visible in the soft light.  
  
“It’s Christmas.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“No, no, no.” She shakes her head and lifts their joined hands to point up at the tree. His fingers brush the pine needles, jostling some ornament with a bell. “Down here. It’s being inside Christmas.”  
  
He smiles at her, feeling overpoweringly, dizzily in love with her, even when she’s making no sense. “Just me and you, Ben. And I. Me.”  
  
“You’re drunk.”  
  
“Yes. Maybe a little.”  
  
“You can’t be inside Christmas, honey. There’s no place to be inside of.”  
  
“But we are.” She rolls toward him, resting her head on his chest, grabbing his other hand and placing it with hers over his heart. “I can see it even if you can’t. And it’s perfect.”  
  
He brushes his free hand through her hair, stroking it away from her cheek and kissing the top of her head. “I bet it is.”


	8. Christmas Challenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben creates a Christmas scavenger hunt for Leslie.

"What is it?" Leslie shakes her present, frowning when it doesn't rattle. For such a big box, it's suspiciously silent.  
  
"You could try opening it."  
  
She sticks out her tongue, but at the same time, her fingers tear at the candy cane wrapping paper with the eager viciousness of a child. Inside is an innocuous brown box, the remains of a postal package re-taped with duct tape. She glances at Ben before picking at the tape with her nails, slowly pulling up an edge and ripping it off. In breathless anticipation, she opens the box and finds--  
  
"Another box? Ben, what is this?"  
  
He shakes his head at her, fighting a smile, though she doesn't see what's so amusing. "Your impatience is astounding sometimes."  
  
"You did this because you know I'm impatient."  
  
Ben grins, indicating that she's not far off base, and Leslie lifts the second box out and attacks. Inside is another box, followed by a fourth, fifth, and sixth until finally she reaches the last one: a long, flat box tied with a green ribbon. It takes too long to get the bow off (as Ben not at all subtly laughs at her), and when she finally gets it open, all she finds a photograph.  
  
"Um..."  
  
"Merry Christmas." He rises on his knees from where he sits on the floor, bracing his hands on the edge of the couch and pressing a kiss to her cheek. When he leans back, he waggles his eyebrows, practically gloating over the puzzled look she knows she's incapable of hiding.  
  
"Honey," she says delicately, "I don't mean to question this clearly thoughtful gift, but what the heck is this?"  
  
"A clue."  
  
"A clue. Okay. To...what exactly?" She studies the photo, an odd close-up of something with green and brown stripes and an odd purple tuft of what looks like yarn at the top. If it's supposed to be artistic, it's pretty abstract.  
  
"Santa knows how much you like a challenge."  
  
Leslie lifts her eyes from the photo and glances at Ben and then the tree, and it dawns on her that most, if not all, of the presents Ben had placed there days ago are gone. "Oh," she says softly, eyes widening and snapping back to Ben. "Oooh, you are so sneaky!"  
  
"Am I?"  
  
She ignores his facetiousness, turning back to the picture and trying to work out where in the house he's indicating she look. The purple tuft is definitely yarn, but not a skein, eliminating her basket of knitting. It must be something that's already finished, and almost everything she owns that's knitted is an outdoor accessory, so that means--  
  
Leslie leaps off the couch, nearly knocking Ben over in the process, and hurries to the hall closet. Their striped basket filled with gloves and scarves and hats is half-hidden behind the coats, but she digs it out, spilling half the contents as she gropes for her present. "Ha ha!" she cackles triumphantly, finding a small wrapped box. There's another picture taped to the top, no more obvious than the first, and she tears it off and puts it in her bathrobe pocket.  
  
"You're going to throw wrapping paper all over the house, aren't you?" asks Ben. He's followed her into the foyer and now leans against the door frame with his arms crossed. Leslie smiles and shrugs, tugging at the corner of the wrapping.  
  
"You're the one who decided not to confine this to the living room."  
  
The present, unsurprisingly, given its shape and size, is jewelry--a pair of gold hoop earrings that serve as a perfect replacement to the pair she lost last summer in one of her excursions between D.C. and Pawnee. They're a bit fancier, inset with small garnets--her birthstone--but the perfect size. Immediately, she lifts them from the box and puts them on, brushing her hair back a bit so Ben can see.  
  
Smiling, she crosses the room to Ben and pushes up on her tiptoes to give him a quick kiss. "You know," she says, tapping his shoulder with her thumb, "I love you for a lot of different reasons, but one of your best qualities is that you're almost as good as I am at giving presents."  
  
He catches her around the waist with one arm, a thumb grazing the shell of her ear, and shakes his head. "Almost?"  
  
"You haven't seen what I got you yet."  
  
"And you, honey, have only found one of your gifts. You'll be singing a different tune at the end of this."  
  
"Doubtful."  
  
But her eyes have already drifted back to the second photo, her mind racing through the possibilities of where he's hidden the next present before the answer strikes like lightning. She spins out of Ben's grip before he realizes what's happening, nearly skipping out of the room. "At this rate, I'm going to find all of these before dawn!"  
  
"We'll see!"


	9. Snowcastles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Ann build a snowcastle together.

“So what is this exactly?”  
  
Ann looked up, surprised; she hadn’t heard Ben creep up next to her. Actually, she wasn’t aware he was here, even though it shouldn’t have been all that shocking; he’d been popping up at everything lately, which she guessed made sense given that he worked with Leslie, but Ann still wasn’t used to his nearly constant presence. Even worse, wherever Ben was, Chris almost always followed, so the second her brain registered that Ben was actually here, she instinctively scanned the lot for Chris. There were plenty of people milling around—an even better turnout than last year’s Non-denominational Mid-December Winter Fun-time Festival—but Ann didn’t notice her ex trembling with enthusiasm among the crowd. Slowly, her gaze fell back on Ben, who was looking at her less obliviously than she wished. If he knew she was worried about her ex being there, though, he didn’t comment on it.  
  
“Leslie told me I had to come,” he prompted, necessarily, Ann supposed, since apparently she’d forgotten how to have a conversation. “She said it would be the best winter celebration of my life.”  
  
Ann kicked herself. Focus, Perkins. “I’ve heard more ridiculous exaggerations,” she said. “I mean, how many winter festivals have you been to before?”  
  
Ben shrugged. “Fifteen? Sixteen? Winter was kind of a big deal in Minnesota.”  
  
“Yeah. I bet. But you didn’t have Leslie.”  
  
“No.” A smile broke out on Ben’s face, this bashful sort of look that Ann wasn’t entirely sure he was aware of, and he glanced over to where Leslie stood on her makeshift stage. Huh. Well that was an interesting development. “No. This is the only place in the world lucky enough to have Leslie.”  
  
Ann smirked—couldn’t quite help herself when confronted by a man so obviously lovesick over her best friend—and crossed her arms. “Maybe you should tell her that.”  
  
Ben snapped, almost as if coming out of a trance, glancing over at her and turning a bit pink. “Oh, uh…I’m sure she, uh, knows…that…”  
  
Leslie was utterly oblivious, if the past few weeks’ chorus of _Do you think he likes me, Ann? Do you? Ann, what do you think?_ was any indication. But at least now Ann had a little more to go on when answering.  
  
Ben was still stammering, hemming and hawing about nothing, and Ann took a tiny bit of pity on him. “So this,” she interrupted as Ben eyed her gratefully, “is Leslie’s snow sculpture contest.”  
  
“Snow sculpture?”  
  
“Last year we had to build animals out of snow. Best one gets a prize.”  
  
“And this year?”  
  
Ann shrugged. “Leslie hasn’t announced it yet. But no doubt it will be something I fail spectacularly at. Last year’s squirrel was a disaster.”  
  
“Oh. You don’t team up with Leslie?”  
  
That was probably the least subtle question Ann had ever heard. The implication—the shy thought that Leslie might be up for grabs as a partner if Ann didn’t claim her—was glaringly obvious. “She and Ron are the judges,” said Ann knowingly. “But you can work with me if you want.”  
  
“Oh I didn’t—I wasn’t—” He paused and let out a long sigh, his breath visible in the air for a moment. “Sure. Let’s work together.”  
  
“Great.”  
  
“Great.”  
  
The theme, as Leslie announced it, turned out to be “mixing the best of both seasons—the fun of summer and the joy of winter” by making snow sandcastles. It was a name Leslie stuck by even after Tom rightly pointed out that they were really making snow castles with no sand involved.  
  
“They’re modeled after sandcastles,” Leslie insisted. A snowball might have been lobbed in Tom’s direction.  
  
Andy actually took the name to heart, running home to get some buckets and shovels, and using them to scoop up the snow and actually make something resembling a sandcastle. He put April in charge of digging the moat, but she spent most of the time creating what looked like snow Dracula to stand on top of the castle.  
  
Chris, who had shown up late, ended up partnering with Jerry, and between Chris’ pontificating and Jerry’s ineptitude, seemed to have accomplished nothing. Ann was more than a little delighted by this. Tom and Jean-Ralphio, meanwhile, couldn’t seem to agree on a design, and finally settled on building the highest tower they could, arguing that towers were most powerful than castles anyway.  
  
And Ann…Well, Ann had no artistic ability and only the most basic snowman making skills. And Ben. Ben, who looked at the snow skeptically and declared, “It’s not really the best snow for building a castle. It’s too soft.”  
  
He was probably right, if Jean-Ralphio’s crying over the third collapse of his tower was any indication, but it was too practical an observation given that they were both adults playing in the snow. “We just have to build something,” Ann argued. “It doesn’t have to be perfect.”  
  
“But isn’t the point to win?”  
  
Ann stared at him. She was suddenly struck by the fact that either he and Leslie were perfect for one another or else they were going to become the most terrifyingly competitive couple in the world.  
  
“Well isn’t it?”  
  
“I guess?”  
  
Ben frowned, tentatively rolling the snow into a ball and tossing it in the air. It immediately fell apart. “Do you have any ice cube trays at your house?”  
  
“Yes. But why—”  
  
“Can you go get them? And bring a watering can with water.”  
  
“Uh…Sure.” She stood up, dusting the snow from her pants, and watching Ben further experiment with the snow. If nothing else, at least she’d have a few minutes to warm up.  
  
When she returned, Ben looked up eagerly, reaching out for the trays and immediately scooping and packing snow tightly into each square and then sprinkling some of the water over the tray. Ann watched skeptically, but after a few minutes, Ben had nearly two dozen tiny snow squares. “We can use them like blocks,” he reasoned as Ann knelt down next to him. “Build the castle.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
It worked reasonably well, even if Ben insisted on decreasing the area of the base so they’d have time to finish. In the couple of hours allotted for them to build, she and Ben managed to construct the tiniest snow castle ever: a square sculpture that vaguely resembled something out of a medieval history book. It was ugly as hell, but neat and well built. Next to Tom and Jean-Ralphio’s abandoned tower—they’d left forty minutes ago after Jean-Ralphio tripped into their latest attempt—and Andy’s collapsing bucket towers, it looked downright spectacular.  
  
“Solid construction,” Ron declared when he and Leslie arrived for the judging, “for something useless made of frozen water.”  
  
“It’s not very sandcastle-ly,” said Leslie with a frown. “And it’s kind of small.”  
  
“You didn’t name size as part of the requirements,” argued Ben.  
  
“Yeah. But it has to be aesthetically pleasing. It’s kind of muddy.”  
  
That had been Ann’s idea, when some of the cubes still wouldn’t hold together. Mixing in a little mud had made it more sound. “Ours is one of the few that’s actually finished and standing.”  
  
Leslie nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, Ann. It’s much cuter than your squirrel was.” She looked at Ben, almost conspiratorially, like she was letting him in on a secret. “Ann’s not so good at making art.”  
  
“Leslie, this is a well-built, pretty historically accurate castle. Things I would think you’d appreciate.”  
  
“I do. Just not in a snow sandcastle contest.”  
  
“That name really doesn’t make any sense.”  
  
Their argument went on for another ten minutes or so, a back and forth that was both dizzying and intense and ricocheted into territory that made little sense, until finally Ann interrupted to remind Leslie she had other castles to judge.  
  
“This is a great castle,” Ben insisted again after Leslie left.  
  
“Uh-huh. Great castle. But we’re not going to win.”  
  
Ben scowled.  
  
Ann was right, of course. They didn’t win (really had no chance given that Donna half-drew, half-built Li’l Sebastian in front of a castle), but Leslie awarded them a special ribbon for best construction.  
  
“You keep it,” said Ann, rolling her eyes at the ambivalent mix of annoyance and thrill on Ben’s face. “Let it be a reminder that you and Leslie are both a little insane.”  
  
“We’re not—”  
  
“You are. And that’s why this’ll probably work out.” She clapped him on the shoulder as he gave her a curious look, laughing at him just a bit. “Come on. Leslie wants to go to J.J.’s. You should come.”  
  
Neither Ben or Leslie would argue about that.


	10. Sleep Patterns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An embarrassing moment after Ben and Leslie move in together.

Once every few months, Leslie sleeps like the dead.

It’s always one of the least restful nights for Ben.

Really, it makes no sense. Leslie is so active most nights: up late working (sometimes in their room because it’s been too many nights falling asleep without her and he insists), rambling in her sleep, rolling or even, occasionally, kicking when she’s restless and too full of thoughts. The reprieve from this—the rare nights she falls asleep on the couch and he has to half-carry her to bed, the nights she sleeps without disturbing him once—is oddly unnerving. He feels on edge, overly conscious of her stillness and caught off guard by the silence.

It shouldn’t be unsettling, but it is. A disturbance in what has become their normal.

This is one of those nights.

Leslie had been half-asleep before she’d gotten into bed, stripping down to her underwear and barely finding the energy to pull a t-shirt over her head. By the time he’d gotten done in the bathroom, she was gone: a motionless lump under the covers.

In the little over an hour since they went to bed, Ben has only managed to drift off into an uneasy sleep once, snoozing only minutes before nothing in particular jarred him awake. Now he lies still, willing his body to relax and remember that Leslie is alive and well next to him, even if she hasn’t wrapped her body around his while they sleep in the way he’s gotten used to. Just because it feels like he’s sleeping next to a lifeless body, doesn’t mean he actually is.

It works. Kind of. He can feel his eyes getting heavier, his body growing calm under the warm sheets. But just as he’s starting to fall into that world of asleep and awake again, he feels her move. Still half-awake, he’s perturbed by the sudden, unexpected sign of life; in all the time they’ve shared a bed, he can’t remember Leslie actually moving on a night like this. He blinks open a sleepy eye at the clock and groans—he really isn’t going to get any sleep tonight—and her name half-falls out of his mouth as he rolls over to look at her. But to his surprise, she’s already out of bed and out the door to the hall

For half a moment, he wonders if he was wrong—that tonight is not one of those nights (a thought that does not sit right given how she’s been acting up until now), and then he hears it. There’s a crash—a sudden, disturbing break in the stillness—and his heart seems to stop beating and plunge into his stomach simultaneously. He bolts out of bed, groping in the dark for the still unfamiliar hall light switch, and is nearly blinded when the lights come on. It takes a minute for his senses to catch up with him, a minute before he’s able to see Leslie, lying at the base of the staircase.

Ben nearly falls down the stairs himself in the lifetime it takes him to get to her, and collapses next to her without the usual protest from his knees. “Leslie? Leslie?”

Is that his voice? It sounds way too calm to be his voice.

“Leslie!”

Leslie groans, almost a whimper, and covers her face with both hands. “Ow.”

“Are you okay?” He feels the compulsory need to pull her into his arms, but he can’t tell how badly she’s hurt and doesn’t want to make anything worse. A voice in the back of his mind is persistently screaming about not moving a person until you can ascertain their injuries, but his arms itch to touch her and see for himself. “Leslie, are you okay?”

“Uh huh.”

“Did you hurt anything? Can you move?”

She parts her fingers, eyes peeping out to look at him and then shutting. “I’m fine,” she says, her voice slightly muffled by her hands. “Just a little bruised.”

Touching her is unstoppable, then. He reaches out and runs a hand over her head, thumb brushing her forehead, and she sighs and lowers her hands. Her cheeks are flushed and she shakes her head self-deprecatingly. “I forgot where I was.”

“What?”

“I forgot we were in the new house,” she says, sitting up and rolling her eyes at herself. “There were fewer stairs in my old house, and I was half-asleep and forgot where I was…”

Ben, whose body is nearly shaking in relief, can’t help the low chuckle that escapes, even as Leslie reaches out and slaps his shoulder. “Sorry,” he apologizes, aware that half of the need to laugh is a release from the near heart attack he just had. The other half, well… “This kind of makes up for all the times you laughed at me for falling in your house, though.”

“I never laughed.”

“There was giggling.”

“Only that one time when you got all twisted in those old sweaters and thought someone was attacking you. I mean, come on. That was kind of hilarious.”

“Yeah. Until I hit my head on the door frame, it was a hoot.”

Leslie smiles, holding out her hands as Ben stands so he can tug her off of the floor. Once she’s upright, she groans, rubbing her ass gently and rolling her eyes. “I’m going to sore for a few days.”

“I’m just glad you didn’t break your neck. I’ve gotten kind of attached to you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” Ben leans down and kisses her, leaning his forehead into hers and exhaling. He suddenly feels like he could sleep for a month. “Now maybe you’ll take this as a sign that you should get more sleep.”

Leslie pulls back, patting his chest lightly and shaking her head. “Nah.”


	11. The Laws of Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Leslie on Christmas Eve

For all of the positive points about Christmas trees, nothing tops the fact that Ben spends an inordinate amount of time crawling under it. Watering it, fiddling with the toy train, sweeping up stray pine needles, and, tonight, arranging and rearranging presents because he has some compulsive need to make it look perfect. If you ask Leslie, wrapped gifts under a lighted tree automatically means perfection, but Ben insists that there’s a way to optimize this. She doesn’t complain, though, because she’ll take any excuse to have this view of his cute butt, even if he’s moving the same gift for the tenth time.  
  
She perches on the arm of the couch, not bothering to pretend she’s not staring, and takes a large bite of a cookie. Crumbs sprinkle onto the lap of her bathrobe, and she absentmindedly brushes them onto the floor. Ben stretches forward, lunging for something just out of reach under the tree and giving her an inadvertent show, and Leslie grins.  
  
“Honey—” He sounds a bit frustrated, fingertips brushing the present he’s looking for, but not quite reaching. “—Do you have the tape? I think the corner of this present is coming loose.”  
  
Leslie pops the rest of the cookie into her mouth as Ben manages to catch the ribbon of the gift and tug it toward his hand. Reluctantly, she stands up and moves behind him, leaning forward so her arms are draped around his neck. As adorable as this whole borderline OCD thing is, she’s going to have to draw a line somewhere. It’s already two in the morning, and re-wrapping gifts that will be torn apart in a matter of hours seems ridiculous.  
  
“Sweetie, no one is more shocked than I am that these words are coming out of my mouth, but I think it’s time we go to bed.”  
  
“Yeah, no, I know. I just need to fix this. And maybe get a new bow for this one because I kind of just smashed it—”  
  
“You know, as my head elf, I appreciate how meticulous you are. But if Santa says the presents look good, then I think we’re done here.”  
  
“Yeah, but…Wait—Why do you get to be Santa?”  
  
Leslie steps back as Ben cranes his neck to look at her, a little aghast that he even has to ask. _Of course_ she’s Santa. “Uh, I have the hat.”  
  
Ben eyes the Santa hat she’s wearing like he might be planning a coup, and Leslie continues, hurriedly. “And I ate all the cookies. Which reminds me, you still have to eat those stupid carrots you insisted we leave out for the reindeer.”  
  
“I thought I was the elf.”  
  
Leslie sticks out her tongue, but privately thinks that if he wants to leave the carrots and allow her to debunk this myth that reindeer like them, he’s welcome to do so. “And,” she finishes, hands fumbling at the tie of her robe and pulling it open, “I’m dressed for the part.”  
  
Ben’s eyes go a bit wide as she gives him a sneak peek of his first Christmas present. Judging by that look, the gifts under the tree are as good as forgotten. “I don’t remember Santa wearing that much red lace,” he murmurs. He finally gets off of his knees and steps toward her just as Leslie closes and reties the robe.  
  
“Santa has a lot of surprises up her sleeve. But you have to come to bed first.”  
  
“Really? Because I would think Santa would have no qualms about doing it in front of the Christmas tree. That’s practically Christmas law.”  
  
Ben’s hand is wandering, pulling aside the top of her robe and running a finger along the edge of her bra, and Leslie sighs. “Christmas law?”  
  
“You know…Cookies for Santa, stockings hung by the fireplace, sex in front of the tree…It’s all in the rulebook somewhere.”  
  
“Oh is it?”  
  
“As head elf, I would know.”  
  
As head elf, he’s insanely capable with his lips and tongue, and Leslie cranes her neck to give him better access. Above their heads, she hears pattering, an indication that certain persons are far from visions of sugarplums dancing through heads, but she allows herself another moment to indulge in her husband’s seduction skills before she pulls back. “Here’s another reason I’m Santa,” she says, putting her hands on his cheeks and forcing him to focus. As single-minded as he is, he keeps trying to lean in and capture her lips. “I know that a certain person is awake right now.”  
  
Ben’s eyes drift to the ceiling just as there’s a particularly violent creak of the floorboard, and he groans. “This is your fault, Santa.”  
  
“Yeah. Like you never got overeager on Christmas Eve.”  
  
“Never.” He leans in and kisses her cheek. And maybe her lips a few times. But really, who can blame him?  
  
“You go,” she prods, nudging him gently. “If I leave you down here alone, you’ll get sucked into another present spiral.”  
  
“I don’t—”  
  
“And you need to get upstairs so you can finish unwrapping me.”  
  
That puts an end to the protests. He plants a sloppy kiss at the corner of her mouth and heads for the stairs as Leslie makes one last inspection of their handiwork and starts to shut off the lights.   
  
“Daddy!” she hears a little voice gasp as she blows out the candles they lit earlier. “I thought you were Santa Claus!”  
  
“Nope. Not me.” There’s a rush of giggles from the stairs, and then Leslie hears Ben’s footsteps ascending, solid and heavy and reassuring. “Come on,” he says. “You know Santa can’t come if you’re out of bed. It’s in the rulebook.”  
  
God, he really is the best head elf.


	12. Snow Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben and Leslie snowed in. This one takes place in season 4 after "Citizen Knope."

If Ben has any romantic connotation with the words _snowed in with your girlfriend_, it disappears the moment he realizes he is, in fact, snowed in with his girlfriend. Maybe, in some universe where Leslie hasn't spent the past two weeks suspended from work, there exists a possible scenario where they spend the day cuddling on the couch, watching Christmas movies and playing board games. But that universe is not their present reality. The fact of the matter is that Leslie has been going stir crazy from the moment she was banished from City Hall, and for the weather to turn on her on the day she returns to her job seems like the universe's last laugh for their rule-breaking.  
  
As much as he would like to give the finger to the universe by staying in bed all day and kissing Leslie to distraction, there is no chance that will happen. For one, Leslie is already out of bed, still shouting through her phone at Ron about snowshoes and perseverance. For another, it will probably take a lot more than kissing to distract Leslie today.  
  
Not that he'd be opposed to more than that.  
  
"It's just a little snow, Ron!"  
  
He glances out the bathroom window again, but the sight is no different than it was five minutes ago: blinding white as far as the eye can see. While he's certainly not prone to panic about snow, that doesn't mean the rest of southeastern Indiana feels the same way. If City Hall is closed, chances are most places will be. Which means they are, as Chris would say, literally trapped in the house.  
  
Leslie's house.  
  
Leslie's scary, nightmare, hoarder nest of a house.  
  
"Ron hung up on me," he hears Leslie announce. He spits out the remainder of his toothpaste and rinses his mouth, and when he looks up, she's standing in the doorway to the bathroom, battle-face ready. "He's totally overreacting. I'm sure plenty of people will show up for work."  
  
"I don't know," he says evenly. He really doesn't want to have to talk Leslie out of snowshoeing to work. "I think most people try to avoid going out in the snow when they can."  
  
"I'm not most people."  
  
He watches as Leslie storms to the bedroom window to glare at the snow again, and then disappears into her closet. It's by far the most terrifying part of Leslie's bedroom, and Ben isn't about to follow her in there. "What are you doing?"  
  
"What do you think?"  
  
"I think you're getting ready to go to work. Which is a little concerning, Les, because I can't even see my car when I look out the window."  
  
"I don't need a car."  
  
"Are you really planning to snowshoe the full 7.2 miles to City Hall?"  
  
Leslie steps out of the closet, wearing a sweater and no pants, and frowns. "You memorized the distance from my house to City Hall?"  
  
"Uh—"  
  
"Is it really that far?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
For a second, Leslie seems ready to acquiesce that this plan is completely insane. Then that stubborn, determined look returns, and she practically marches to her dresser. "I don't care," she says, digging through one of two drawers full of blue jeans. His eyes stray to her ass for a minute, incapable of not appreciating the way her underwear clings to her curves.  
  
"You know," he says, "you could wait to see if the snow slows down. They might clear the roads. And there's other stuff—" She straightens up then, turning to face him and raising an eyebrow when she realizes where his attention was. "—we could do. In the meantime."  
  
Leslie smirks, an expression of amusement and perverse satisfaction that makes him want to kiss her. Hard. "Like shovel the driveway?"  
  
He reaches out, setting his hands on her hips and sliding his thumbs beneath the waistband of her panties. "Sure. Or we could have sex." He leans in, kissing the corner of her mouth and then moving down to her neck.  
  
"You just don't want me to go out," Leslie protests, but she tilts her head to give him better access to that sweet spot on her neck, whimpering as he runs his tongue lightly against her skin. "You're trying to distract me."  
  
"Yeah. But it's just because I have a selfish need not to see you die in a blizzard."  
  
Leslie's fist balls into his shirt, pushing him back until his legs hit the bed. He sits, watching as she pulls her sweater over her head, and then climbs into his lap. "It's just all about you, isn't it?"  
  
"Well," he says, hand drifting down and stroking her through her panties. "Not _all_ about me."

  
******

Three hours later, Leslie has shoveled the driveway twice, drank three cups of hot cocoa, and tripped once during her incessant pacing around the living room. In what appears to be a miraculous turn of events but is probably just inevitability when living in Pawnee, Leslie's snowshoes were apparently destroyed by raccoons, along with several boxes of winter clothes she claims she's been meaning to donate. Though if you ask Ben, distinguishing the parts of the garage that were destroyed by raccoons from the rest of the contents is basically an impossible task. It is entirely possible that the snowshoes were already ruined, and Leslie simply hadn't thrown them away.  
  
They're in the trash now, though. He double checked.  
  
Once she'd finally accepted that her return to the parks department had been delayed for at least another day, she'd disappeared upstairs to work on the campaign. Without Leslie's restlessness to distract him, Ben's feeling more than a little antsy himself. His own projects are all at home, hidden under his bed but still more than vulnerable to an Andy and April who can't leave the house, and he really wishes he had his modeling clay. He needs to finish that bedroom set for his Claymation movie.  
  
And, if he's being honest, he doesn't want to be left alone with his thoughts right now. There are too many things he's actively trying not to consider. Like Leslie's campaign, and the inevitable uphill battle she's facing, and the fact that he's just declined her third request for help.  
  
Fortunately, Leslie's house is a pretty good distraction. At least in the sense that, left alone in it, Ben is driven to distraction by how messy it is.  
  
Both Ann and Leslie claim that the house was clean at one point a couple of years ago, and that it still isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. He thinks they meant to reassure him, but the fact that Leslie could make this mess in two years is slightly terrifying. It certainly didn't stop him from having at least one hoarder-related nightmare about the future. Leslie had laughed when he told her, kissed him, and promised that she could keep it under control if she wanted to.  
  
He likes to hope that if they ever do move in together, she would want to for the sake of his sanity.  
  
The strangest part, he thinks, is how little Leslie actually gets to enjoy her immense collection of stuff. To some extent, he can understand the sentimentality of it, but when it's all boxed up, it begins to seem rather pointless. The lack of space, the clutter, the uselessness: it's turned her home into a storage space, draining away the joy that should exist here, and that, more than anything, is what baffles him.  
  
And it's more obvious to him now, a week before Christmas, than ever before.  
  
Leslie has one tiny fake tree in her bedroom, the only room that is close to uncluttered in the house in the sense that it is at least maneuverable. The tree sits on top of her dresser, complete with lights and a tiny tree skirt. Her explanation—that she'd given up on getting a proper Christmas tree set up in her house years ago—still irks him. There's something not right about Leslie Knope not having a real Christmas tree. Even the decorations she has managed to put up, like the stockings on her mantle, are so lost in the mess that it doesn't seem like Christmas here.  
  
It's that thought, as much as his own distaste with the clutter and utter boredom, that compels him to start moving boxes.  
  
It's a pretty daunting task. He wouldn't presume to actually start removing things, however much he doesn't see the merit in a box full of unused lamps, but rearranging the clutter enough to make room for the holidays seems feasible. He starts in the dining room, sliding boxes to the walls and trying to leave things Leslie might actually need within reach; from there he begins to move the contents of the living room into the dining room, condensing the area the clutter takes up rather than actually cleaning. It makes the dining room even less functional than it was, but the fact that he can finally see her living room seems to make up for it.  
  
By the time he's done, Leslie is still upstairs, there's a fresh coat of snow on the driveway, and Ben uncomfortably aware of the layer of dust that covers the now visible surfaces.  
  
Naturally, dusting and vacuuming seems like the next step.  
  
That's how Leslie finds him an hour later: sleeves rolled up, hands smudged with dirt, vigorously polishing her mantle.  
  
He hears her on the stairs, and turns to look at her as she enters the room, forgetting for a second that she didn't know what he was up to. Her eyes widen as she looks around the room, until finally her questioning gaze lands on him.  
  
"What… Are you cleaning my house?"  
  
Ben looks from Leslie to the dust cloth in his hand, as though he needs to reaffirm that he is, in fact, cleaning her house. Suddenly this feels a lot weirder than it did when he started, and he feels the heat of embarrassment creeping up the back of his neck. "Uh, yeah," he admits. "I am."  
  
Leslie bites her bottom lip as her eyes sweep over the now box-less room. He has no idea what she's thinking right now, but he suspects he unwittingly stepped over some boundary they weren't ready to cross. At what stage in the relationship is it okay to spontaneously clean your girlfriend's house?  
  
"Where did everything go?"  
  
"Dining room. I didn't—I just moved it. It's all still there." Leslie steps further into the room, turning to see her now filled-to-capacity dining room, and Ben can't quell the urge to explain. "I, uh, I was thinking about Christmas. And that it might be nice to have a Christmas tree. One that we don't have to share with Andy and April. Plus it would be good, you know, if we're going to spend Christmas morning here…" He takes a deep breath, forcing himself to stop babbling and get to the point. "I'm sorry."  
  
"You don't have to be sorry."  
  
"Really? It's not, I don't know…Weird?"  
  
Leslie shrugs. "Maybe. But it's also kind of sweet. I hate cleaning."  
  
"Yeah. I kind of guessed that."  
  
Leslie taps one of the stockings on the mantle, and then glances over her shoulder at the window. "I think I still have my tree somewhere."  
  
"Have—What? Like a fake tree?"  
  
"Yeah. My mom gave it to me a few years ago. We always had an artificial tree because my mom is allergic to pine trees."  
  
Ben blinks. "That's a thing?"  
  
"Apparently." Leslie laughs, probably because his astonishment is evident on his face. But really, a _fake_ tree? "What? It looks just like a real tree."  
  
"But it's _not_."  
  
Leslie is still laughing, looking way more amused than the situation warrants. He supposes in the grand scheme of things, an artificial tree is still better than no tree, but it's also incredibly lame. Part of him can't believe that after all of this, she's going to put up a tree that comes from a box.  
  
She shakes her head, still grinning.  
  
"What?" he asks.  
  
"You have a Christmas thing!" says Leslie. She steps forward and wraps her arms around his waist, still giggling. "I didn't peg you as the kind of person who has Christmas traditions. It's cute."  
  
"It's just a tree."  
  
"Yeah. But it's important to you."  
  
He frowns, not quite sure that a previously unrealized preference for Christmas trees is something he wants to be important. He hasn't even had a Christmas tree of his own in over a decade.  
  
"I always wanted a real tree when I was a kid," she says. "I'm not even sure that pine allergy thing is real. I think maybe my mom just didn't want to clean up after a real tree."  
  
"We always had them," says Ben. "My parents used to compete over who got the bigger tree."  
  
"That's…"  
  
"Crazy. That's crazy, Les."  
  
Leslie pushes up on her tiptoes and kisses him, and the sensation of her smile against his lips is infectious. "Let's get a real tree," she says.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
She kisses him again, slow and sweet this time, and when she pulls back, her eyes are shining. "Definitely," she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for this one! I'll be posting three other holiday fics that are a little longer in the next few weeks.


End file.
